Jurassic Park may as well have been made for the toys. Who doesn’t love dinosaurs? They make the best action scenes, making me a fan for life. Twenty years from now, if there are still movie releases, I will still be in the theatre in awe of the dinosaurs. The plot is secondary; as long as there are awesome dinosaur fights…I am there.
Imagine the glee of getting one of those dinosaur figures for Christmas. I’d want a giant T-rex to just go on a rampage against my other figurines outside. My parents would be like, “Calm down,” and I’ll just scream dinosaur noises and throw my toy t-rex into my cereal because he’s durable and hungry like that.
However instead I get…a creature that’s like you started making a t-rex, changed your mind on how big it was going to be halfway, and then gave up on the whole thing overall. I open the present on Christmas day holding a disproportionate t-rex that looks well…stupid. Its head is the size of its body and it bears no resemblance to the savage beast I awed at in the films.
Dinosaurs and people can make incredibly stupid looking figures if done wrong. There are also some toy companies that think that they need to make a toy less realistic if it’s for young kids, but instead of making something look innocent, they make an embarrassing abomination. There are also collectable toys I have a bone to pick with because I am full of opinions and the internet is merciless.
25 Dennis Nedry Figure
This collectable figure is from the great year of 1993 and comes with a tranquilizer spray gun, gas mask, dino-damage arm, and dilophosaurus hatchling.
One issue though: this looks nothing like Dennis Nedry!
Make this action figure fat you cowards.
Dennis, played by Wayne Knight, was fat in the movie and I’m actually offended that the makers made him skinny. Do they think fat people won’t sell? Also his outfit is completely different. Why isn’t he wearing that raincoat he died in? Why are we making him look like a secret agent? That totally flips his bumbling and slightly cowardly personality that ended him in the first place.
This is not Dennis, the toy maker is a liar and a fraud. This is a bodyguard.
24 Tracking the T-Rex
Some crazy people are trying to sell this abomination for more than 100 dollars on Ebay. Look at that man. That’s not a person! His feet and hands are larger than the rest of his whole body! He is definitely the worst part of this whole set. I don’t care that it’s for kids. If I was a kid, at any age, I would be disappointed in the adult world for thinking this is what I deserve.
I don’t think this should be a Jurassic Park brand item. If you are too afraid to make realistic Jurassic Park toys for kids, then maybe just don’t make Jurassic Park toys for kids.
Look at that t-rex, he’s straight out of a cartoon. Not Jurassic Park material.
23 Velocirapteryx
This little treasure is from the Jurassic Park: Chaos Effect toy line. Chaos Effect is a line of action figures produced by Kenner in 1998. The premise was that mad scientists merged various dinosaur DNA, resulting in colorful made-up dinosaurs.
The Velocirapteryx was the most popular figure of this unpopular line.
But I don’t like it. No, I don’t like it because Chaos Effect just went ham on made-up dinosaurs, and they look like they came out of a rave. None of them exist which makes it feel more like fantasy than science fiction. Most of the beasts look absurd in their paint-jobs. I’ll give the Velocirapteryx that it’s the most realistic looking of the bunch but it’s still just the best of the worst. The box boasts “flight capability.” I’m no biologist, but those wings are too small for flying.
22 Estemmenosuchus By Kenner
This is just not a cool looking dinosaur. Why would I want this when I could have a Velociraptor, T-Rex, or Brontosaurus? This is a very less-known dinosaur. I think the only trait it has going for it is the uniqueness.
I can’t even pronounce this one’s name.
One thing this and some other figures by Kenner have in common is “dino-damage” where you can take a piece of its skin off to show some muscle and bone. This is to create a wound when you make the dinosaurs fight. I find this an all-around bad idea because the skin piece can easily get lost and you have a permanently wounded dinosaur. The toy has a single center front tooth which is distracting and unnecessary for an estemmenosuchus anyway.
21 Indominus Rex
A lot of fans just have a problem with this dinosaur period. As if dinosaurs were not cool enough on their own, we had to make crazy hybrids in Jurassic World that just are not necessary to make a film good or a dinosaur cool.
This dinosaur is the whopping combination of a tree-frog, pit-viper, cuttlefish, Giganotosaurus, Majungasaurus, T-Rex, Velociraptor, Therizinosaurus, Rugops, and a bunch of other random animals. It sounds so ridiculous; I can just imagine the writer rolling dice to figure out each species to put in this monster.
It looks nice on screen if you don’t think about its crazy DNA and abilities. It’s like something two kids would come up with just to one-up each other.
“Oh yeah?! Well my dinosaur is as big as a Giganotosaurus and as smart as a Velociraptor. He can camouflage too because he’s part tree-frog. HA.”
20 Brawlasaurs
These cheap looking little nippers really ruin the Jurassic immersion for me. They look small and cheaply made. Like my mother could step on one and it’ll break. Or a kid will throw it and it’ll break. Or a dog will shatter it in his jaws.
I’m fine with toys being made out of plastic, but that doesn’t mean that have to look this much like plastic. Their gimmick is that they are toys that fight each other by winding their tail. Who needs that?
What happened to just beating toys against each other?
In an attempt to get this stuff to sell, each figure came with a feature that has a code that is used to unlock an animal in Jurassic World: The Game.
19 Playskool Heroes T-Rex
It’s almost like just because something has a dinosaur in it, we can brand it as Jurassic World material to get it to sell. Who is that man? No one cares, there’s a dinosaur in it so I guess its Jurassic World related.
The product says it’s for ages 3 to 7, how many children in that age range actually watched any of the Jurassic Park series? I love how they’ve even twisted the famous Jurassic Park t-rex skeleton icon to look more child-friendly.
Congratulations, now it just looks like Yoshi from Mario’s skeleton.
I hate the “human’s” giant hands and feet. The t-rex isn’t so bad I guess. At least you can open its jaws and it looks mad. It’s probably mad about its own design.
18 Hero Mashers
It’s a Make-Your-Own-Abomination kit!
Apparently this idea to mix and match parts of a whole was a trend for a lot of toy makers and someone decided to spread its disease to Jurassic World. This craze was a part of Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, and Marvel figures for a while.
I know this is again for kids, but the bright colors make my adult eyes bleed. Dinosaurs are not supposed to be bright! Mix and matching their parts with other dinosaurs make it worse because then the colors don’t match either. The bright colors suggest this is for very little kids, but the little pieces also suggest a choking hazard. You fools!
This again brings up the important concern of losing pieces too. What if I just lose this dinosaurs head in my yard or car?
17 Baby T-Rex
God help this poor creature. I don’t know if it’s normal cute or so stupid that I feel a maternal need to protect it from its own stupid. Its eyes look like it knows something horrifying that it isn’t allowed to share.
I think part of this thing’s unsettling appearance is the combination of plush, plastic, and electronic materials that we can thank for its creation. Apparently they invite you to stick your finger in its mouth because to buy this you must have the level of trust of a Labrador.
I wouldn’t want this on my shelf watching me at night. Also this hatchling makes “dino-movements.” What exactly does that mean? I bet all it does it make very loud electronic noises while it’s head turns ever so slightly to look at the world with its dead fish eyes.
16 Compstegnathus
This fake creature is from the Chaos Effect toy line, that magical place where everything was overdone with ridiculous hybrids and colors. To get into specifics, the compstegnathus is a hybrid between a Compsognathus, a Stegosaurus and an African tree frog.
It looks like a robot dinosaur for a Batman movie.
This had to be on the list because according to Jurassic-pedia, “The concept of mutated dinosaurs evidently didn’t flow too well with scores of JurassicPark fans. Unlike Kenner’s other releases, which received rave reviews, this line was, and generally still is, considered to be a failure. As testimony to the toyline’s vast unpopularity, the Chaos Effect paintjobs were voted to be the ugliest of all existing Jurassic Park toylines.”
A number of toys from this series are very rare now due to how much they sucked, which is hilarious.
15 Ian Malcom Figure
I’ll admit this figure is pretty cool. I’m just going to be nit-picky.
The little dinosaur looks like it belongs in a cartoon. The paint job is cool but doesn’t he look like a dinosaur more likely to be seen in Land Before Time rather than Jurassic Park? There was some dinosaur that sang about eggs in one of those movies and I think the figure looks like he can and will sing about eating eggs too.
Ian Malcom looks cool but I have to point out that the big sunglasses are a sneaky way to get around face details. You know what though; I could just be a crazy millennial since it seems this figure was the bee’s knees in the 1990s. I can’t even decide if the gun is overdone or if it’s the coolest thing about this toy set.
14 Ellie Sattler Figure
This figure of Ellie Sattler looks like a hybrid between He-Man and Steve Erwin.
She is my favorite, so how dare they do this to us.
I want a woman who looks like the woman she is in the movies. As a woman, I need this. You can be feminine and fight dinosaurs. No, not in high heels like in Jurassic World, that was too much. Just…don’t make her look like He-Man or Steve Erwin. Those guys are also my heroes so they need their own stuff away from Ellie Sattler.
The grappling hook and backpack look a little ridiculous in terms of color and I don’t think her figure will be able to balance while holding them. I imagine the grappling hook also can get tangled.
13 Chomper T-Rex
This is the monstrosity that I was describing in the introduction. T-rexes already have weird proportions with their tiny little arms. Why do we need to make it worse by inflating the head and feet like they are hot air balloons?
If I played this toy, he would be the one to get picked on despite being at the top of the first chain. I’d pretend he was born different and his character arch would involve finding a way to love himself for how he is despite society not catering to his psychological and physical needs.
This figure is able to chomp, that’s like its whole point. I just can’t picture the amazing t-rex roar coming from that mouth. I can imagine it opening and just saying, “Waka waka.”
12 Ajay
I’m sorry, Ajay who? This guy was such a minor character in The Lost World: Jurassic Park. The toy companies have so much to work with, so why did they waste time with this guy?
They buffed this figure up with unnecessary muscles for good hugging.
Realism is just gone with this figure too. He looks nothing like how he was in the movie. He looks like someone not to be messed with, but we all know he was messed with; he was messed with good by the dinosaurs in the film. The man wore glasses, not sunglasses, and we all know that glasses counted as a character trait for films in those days.
The little dinosaur is cute, but I don’t think it would be able to even stand on its own.
11 Battle Malcom
This was going to be part of the wondrous Chaos Effect toy-line. However this power suited Malcom never made it to the store selves. Someone on the team probably just stopped what they were doing, picked up the finalized battle Malcom and just asked themselves, “What am I doing? Look at this. It’s like a Transformers action figure. That isn’t awesome. That’s bad. We’re bad.”
Battle Malcom was among eight Chaos Effect figures that never made it out to the stores due to not getting enough profit from the toys already released.
I bet the franchise is going to have battle mechs in future films. Someone is going to just lose their minds at how much adrenaline they can pump into one scene and just scream, “Mechs! We got to add giants robots!”
10 Nedry Funko Pop
Hey look, I actually can recognize Nedry in this figure! That’s what I want, a Funko Pop figure within seconds of his end from blinding dinosaur spit.
We can just never get a “normal” Nedry figure can we?
Full disclosure, I watched Jurassic Park at too young an age because I loved dinosaurs. Nedry’s fate scarred me for life. There was something inheritably disturbing about seeing an adult get taken down by a bunch of tiny little reptiles. Now you can get a Funko Pop to always remind you of that messed-up torment!
That may not even be spit, that could be dinosaur vomit. You can buy a Funko Pop figure with dinosaur vomit on its face. I guess I’ll admit that Funko Pop did work with one of the most memorable parts of the franchise, at least for me.
9 Hatchling
Yeah, the baby T-Rex abomination has a friend.
This looks more closely related to a porg from Star Wars than any dinosaur I know. I imagine hugging this thing would feel the same as hugging a toaster covered in a blanket with glass eyes. The generic Beanie Baby pterodactyl I’ve kept from my childhood seems one thousand times more realistic!
I want to tear this thing apart to see the electronic monster that lies enough that layer of false softness. In Toy Story, this toy would be an evil robot disguised as a toy. Andy would buy it and put it next to Buzz Lightyear.
It’ll turn and say robotically, “Hello, fellow soft and squishy toys. It’s a good day to be loved and full of stuffing. My stuffing is particularly soft and hides no AI unit.”
8 Dr. Snare
“Doctor” Snare? Where did this man get a degree?! What’s his degree in? How did a college education lead him to raiding? His outfit is too much. He is shirtless with abs that have the power to grate cheese, a duster, and are those dinosaur-skin cowboy boots? What a bad dude.
This figure is the leader of the evil poaching raiders of the Jurassic Park series two toy-line. Apparently his backstory is that he used to work on an alligator farm until he was fired.
I’m starting to think he’s not actually a doctor.
Okay, I’ll be real and admit that Dr. Snare is a good, cheesy villain name for a kids flick. He kind of reminds me of that Australian poacher villain from the Rescuers Down Under.
7 Tanystropheus
What. Is. That?
That’s not a dinosaur, that’s noodles.
I’m kidding, it’s a real dinosaur. So I have a question. Why haven’t we seen this giant noodle monstrosity in the series yet? I want a giant noodle dinosaur monster! We get a toy? I just read in the wiki that this thing is supposed to be 20 feet long! It’s a predator, it eats fish! That’s awesome!
You could just have this thing’s noodle neck lash out of a lake and eat people and dinosaurs. The great storytelling aspect of this thing is that you never see its whole body which adds to the suspense and fear of the flick. When people go to the lake, the audience will then get all uptight because the tanystropheus may or may not attack.
6 Jurassic Park Junior Blue Dinosaur
Ah yes, Jurassic Park toys for preschoolers. Preschoolers love watching dinosaurs change the lives of their fellow man.
The Junior toy-line was not necessary. If you handed me this blue goofy creature and said, “That’s a Jurassic Park toy,” I’d laugh and say, “Ya, I love this one” because I thought you were joking and I like playing along and feeling like I’m the cool friend.
Shelter him. Protect him. Don’t tell him about the comet.
It looks so innocent. It doesn’t need to be a part of Jurassic Park you greedy corporation monsters. Just let this dinosaur be its own thing. It’s because of toys like this that someone like me saw Jurassic Park too early and oddly got scared of turning my back to windows at night.
